This week I bought the newest issue of ImagineFX magazine to get check out some new art and artists and I was super inspired by Lois van Baarle's loose, natural, face sketches. I decided to try to draw some myself without looking at reference photos and here is the final product!
 
Tip: Use dark lines for outlines and shadows, and light, loose lines for filler and texture. I struggled with this when I first started drawing because I wanted to do either all light lines or all dark lines. Mixing it up will give your drawings dimension and depth!

Guys! I recently started a new job and it has been great so far but it has been a lot. of. training. I spent a few days out of town for a training and got a lot of sketching/doodling in while I was there. The page on the right is full of doodles that I did during the classes on the side of my notes (that I then cut out and taped in my sketchbook), and the page on the left has some more refined doodles that I did in my hotel room. I really wanted to try drawing girls without looking at references to test my anatomy/face skills and I'm pretty happy with how they turned out! 
Tip: If you want to try drawing without a reference photo, look around! Start drawing from real life. Real people move around and chance positions and it forces you to draw quickly and imagine and remember shapes even after your "reference" is gone. 

Lazy Sundays are for trying new things! I bought 3 tubes of Winsor & Newton Designers Gouache a few weeks ago with the intention of trying out this new medium but I hadn't gotten the chance until today. I was a little intimidated but OMG it's so fun and the texture is so satisfying. There are definitely some things I learned and ways I can improve, but I'm pretty happy with it for my first try! 

Tip: Use your sketchbook to try new things! Gouache is super fun but so are markers and colored pencils and watercolors and acrylics and crayons. Let go of the fear of messing up and see what happens!

It's August so it's basically Halloween, right? Right. For this little bat girl I used a Faber Castell XS pen and shaded using an ink wash technique (diluted black ink in an aqua brush). The left page is just some hand practice. 

Tip: Using graph paper can help with accuracy and proportions! And Post-It has these amazing sticky note graph paper pads that are perfect for your sketchbook! 

Hey guys! I ran out of daylight Sunday and yesterday so I didn't get a chance to take photos but here's your peek into my sketchbook this week!
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Tip: If I like the tone and shading of my drawings in pencil, I'll leave them in pencil and if I want to color them in, I'll use a lightpad to trace it on another piece of paper and add color with paint or marker or pen. That way you don't risk messing up your original drawings! 

This lavender girl is inspired by the always lovely Haley Jordan (look her up, she's wonderful)!

I redid this pencil drawing using Posca paint pens and I'm kinda stoked about how it turned out! What's your favorite way to add color to your drawings?

It's all about cats and flowers for sketchbook #5! These are sketched out in pencil, lined with faber-castell XS pen, and the flowers are colored with copic markers. Btw, I use sticky notes to cover up marker bleed-through, but they also just give some super cool dimension to the sketcbook page!

Tip: Use things in your real life as references and then simplify and play around with the shapes to make them more "cartoony". The cats with with the flowers are based on my cat, Pancake and the little sticky note cat is based on my other cat, Backpack. I sketched all the cats in about 20 minutes by just focusing on the most simple shape and not putting a whole lot of pressure on myself to get the anatomy perfect (clearly lol). 

I've been working on these two illustrations all week and trying to improve on my coloring and blending. "Earth" (on the left) and "Sky" on the right were both drawn with Faber Castell ink pens and colored with Copic markers. Scroll down for a video of how I colored the trees/leaves in the Earth illustration! 
Tip: When you mess up on a drawing in your sketchbook, before ripping it out and starting over, try covering the parts you don't like with a sticky note or piece of paper and draw over it  (in the Sky illustration, I hated the color I originally chose for the face and sun, but I liked the rest so I made it work!)

Hello again! It's Sketchbook Sunday! This past week I was at Kiawah Island, SC and I could not stop looking at all the plants! I had been practicing painting with watercolors again, so I continued with that and spent the rest of the week drawing and redrawing plants that were around our house. But of course I had to add some girls in there too.
Tip: Take a sketch that you like and try recreating it in a different medium to see the differences/challenges between the two, and to test your skills in both!

Something I always struggle with drawing is shoes and clothes; for me it's always been really hard to get a natural look that doesn't feel super realistic or stiff and boring. So for this week, enjoy these two pages of messy sketches where I tried to figure all that out.
Tip: Make sure both shoes don't look exactly the same when you're drawing a pair. Even if you're drawing them from the same angle (like the boots in the bottom right corner). Drawing them a little misshapen makes them look worn and more natural. (: 

Clothes are hard too. Here I was just trying to really focus on the shapes and the way the clothes lay. Not a huge fan of this one but hey, that's what practice is for!
What do you struggle with drawing and how do you practice to get better? Is there something you'd like me to highlight next Sketchbook Sunday? Tell me in the comments below or shoot me an e-mail by clicking the button! 

There's a quote by John Mayer that says, "“If you had started doing anything two weeks ago, by today you would have been two weeks better at it.”. I read that a few years ago and since then, I've kind of adopted it as a philosophy for my art . So, in an effort to keep myself constantly working and improving, I'm starting up a new weekly blog series: Sketchbook Sunday! Every Sunday, I'll be sharing one or two pages from my sketchbook for you all to see what I've been working on! I can't promise they'll all be winners, but I'm going to share it anyway.

I've been working on getting better at drawing people, which of course includes drawing all kinds of people: different face shapes, features, hair, etc, so I started drawing all the faces I could fit on one page. These faces come from either memory or reference photos (mostly Pinterest) and were sketched in pencil and then outlined/colored with Staedtler Fineliner pens. Enjoy! And if you have any questions or just wanna chat, hit me up!
​See you next Sunday!